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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27488791">She Drinks Coffee, He Drinks Tea</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatyaMorrigan/pseuds/KatyaMorrigan'>KatyaMorrigan</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drabble, Established Relationship, F/M, Opposites Attract, she drinks coffee he drinks tea, their differences are what make them perfect together</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:13:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,639</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27488791</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatyaMorrigan/pseuds/KatyaMorrigan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione and Draco seem like polar opposites - and in many ways, they are. But it is those contradictions between each other that create an unbreakable partnership, and a comfort in the other's differing views.<br/>Loosely based on my own development of the characters in my longer Wattpad fics 'Scars That Heal' and 'A Little Less Broken'.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>She Drinks Coffee, He Drinks Tea</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Day 10 of my NaNoWriMo writing challenge this year - one oneshot a day, every day for the whole of November. I'm following the SOFTober 2020 prompts by @wafflesandkruge on Instagram to give me some fluffy starting points for the coming month of fics.<br/>The prompt for today was "coffee".<br/>I hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hermione drank strong coffee in the mornings, made for her each day by her boyfriend. She never added sugar, only occasionally a splash of milk when it was so acidic it gave her stomach ache, and always took the first sip before it was cool enough. There was no glamour in the coffee she chose – instant worked fine, home-ground took too much time – and it was more for the comforting taste that reminded her of long nights studying than for the enjoyment of the drink itself.</p><p>
  <em>Draco drank camomile tea, late at night, to soothe himself after long days at work. The kettle was normally still warm after whatever drink Hermione had made, and he would carefully blow the steam from the surface before drinking. It was rare that he drink coffee, even rarer that he drink it as black as his girlfriend, and more often than not there would be a joke about his workload having increased for Draco to even consider a sweet, milky cup of coffee in the morning. </em>
</p><p>Of all the books crammed into their tiny apartment, Hermione’s were mostly non-fiction. Yes, she was a reader, but it was rarely reading for the pleasure of a story. She was fact-focused, information-driven, and there were shelves and shelves of biographies and textbooks, guides and self-help books that she had collated over the years. Every single book she owned had to be read before it was put on the shelf, and Hermione was proud to have so many authors’ work in mind whenever she glanced across the colourful spines. When she did read for a story, Hermione chose contemporary or classics. Something with distinct characters and clear narrative drive where she could admire the craft of the novel as much as enjoy the story it told. There were plenty of Austens on her shelves, clustered amongst a few texts from her childhood – Enid Blyton, mostly.</p><p>
  <em>On the higher shelves were Draco’s books, all thrillers and historical fiction, some lighter horror, but nothing that discussed abuse. Never anything to do with cults. He read for the fun of it, for being sucked into a story so intense and unforgettable that you didn’t realise you had finished the book by the time the last page had been turned. Did he ever read non-fiction? No, but he loved to sit with Hermione in the evenings and hear her talk about something new she had learned from one of her books. There were other ways to absorb information, and although Draco liked to learn vicariously through his girlfriend, that wasn’t the way he saw books. They were escapism purely, and that was how he treated them.</em>
</p><p>Although they shared the cooking in their house, Hermione was the baker. She liked rhythm and rules, the instructions that had to be followed and always turned out a result. It reminded her of Potions class, and that was what reassured her. There was no room for error in Potions – you couldn’t adjust the recipes to your fancy. Hermione liked that she could mix flour with eggs and sugar and butter, and there would always be a cake. Her experimentation went as far as finding new recipes, one for chocolate cake, another for lemon drizzle, but she didn’t dare to meddle with the precise formulas each recipe offered. Hermione preferred sweet to savoury, and did her share of the cooking with grace but no style. The food she served was always exactly what you would expect – and that was what Draco liked.</p><p>
  <em>He, on the other hand, was the improviser. They would decide on curry, and he would raid the cupboards for every spice they owned, mixing them together in new combinations to see what he could create next. Every new recipe they found and enjoyed would be elaborated upon – seasonings for chicken would be applied to pork, and beef, and sometimes to vegetable roasts. A new flavour that they liked would be incorporated into everything from salads to pasta. Draco loved that cooking gave him freedom to create something new every time he turned on the hob. He could take the same recipe as last night and fashion an entirely different creation from it by adjusting a measurement and adding some paprika instead. As he became part of Hermione’s life, Mrs Weasley offered him a scrapbook of recipes with a smile and a touch of his cheek. That huge file of ideas for evening meals and exciting breakfasts, snack foods and desserts and everything in between became his Bible, the founding rock of everything new he tried. If Molly Weasley had tried and tested it, surely he could push it a little further and make something truly special from it?</em>
</p><p>Hermione was the fact-checker in arguments. She never deviated from the truth, never strayed from what she knew was right, and used it to put forward her stance in every disagreement she and Draco had. Hermione was not cruel, but she was thoughtless with her emotions sometimes. There wasn’t the same light touch of empathy from her – the truth was the basis of all she said. She never intended to hurt Draco’s feelings, but to her, those were less important than the reality of whatever had prompted argument. It was vital to get to the best compromise from there, to meet in the middle, and find a way for them both to accept the facts as they stood.</p><p>
  <em>Draco, on the other hand, was emotionally driven beyond anything else. If something felt wrong, he would say so. Even if everything was logically and rationally okay, his gut instinct would make him check with Hermione, again and again, until he was certain that his feelings were being listened to. He was the crier, the one to leave the room, the one who would call a time-out when things started to turn nastier. And he was the quickest to apologise for causing upset, the first to make tea and coffee to reconcile. There was no ego from his side in arguments, only the part of his heart that said when he was unhappy, and that didn’t listen to honesty or fact if it didn’t feel right to him. When things were at their worst and they had arguments lasting days at a time, Draco would wistfully think about the early days of their relationship, and wonder how they had made it through so much opposition when they were fine-tuned in opposite directions. But on the best days, Draco was reminded that Hermione brought him back to rationale and logic every single time, and that he gave her an emotional awareness that she couldn’t develop with anyone less sensitive than him.</em>
</p><p>She may have been seen as a workaholic only, but Hermione played as hard as she worked. Her hobbies were numerous – writing, collecting, scrapbooking, tennis on Thursdays and book club on Fridays – and she threw herself into them as intensely as she focused on her job when seated at her desk in the Ministry of Magic. Her life balance sometimes teetered on a knife edge, and there were always a few days a year when she had to take a week off just to regain a sense of self beyond the titles to her name. But it was a virtuous thing when Hermione had everything to the right level. She was motivated and driven, fulfilled in every way. She gave Muggle-Wizard relations talks at charity functions, opened buildings in the name of the Minister when he was unavailable, spoke at Hogwarts to encourage a new generation of free thinkers, and worked on articles for the Quibbler on the side – at Luna’s request, obviously. It was all at her fingertips, this world she had carved out in her free time, and Hermione didn’t ever want it to stop. When she started thinking about having children, the first conversation she and Draco had was how to fit childcare and the raising of a small human into her schedule without becoming burnt out and demoralised. She was intense – Hermione lived life to the fullest at every opportunity, and “no” seemed to be missing from her vocabulary.</p><p><em>Draco worked no less hard, but with less of the attachment to his work. It wasn’t that he disliked his job, or his hobbies, or anything else he dedicated his time to, but that life was about enjoyment. There was no race to be won, no best-before date on his accomplishments. Draco took things easy, spent his time in the office well, but never worked extra hours on weekends like Hermione did. He lived with ease, choosing his moments to throw all of his energy and passion into, and spending enough time each week living slowly. There would always be a tomorrow, there would always be a second chance. Why worry about the length of life already gone when there was so much still left for him to fill? Sometimes he and Hermione did not understand each other, when she was spending another several hours on a Friday evening frantically completing her case reports for Monday before leaving for book club, and when he was desperate to go for a long walk beside the river. But it was important, they both felt, to see the other completely content with their way of living. Sometimes Hermione’s passion inspired Draco, and it was what made him go above and beyond at work, earning him promotions and recognition that he doubted he would have achieved otherwise. Sometimes Draco’s contentment got Hermione to slow down, to take an evening to sit on the sofa with him and reread </em>Northanger Abbey <em>with the radio softly crooning in the background.</em></p><p>There was balance to be found in their polar self-expression, in their attitudes and dedication. Hermione loved Draco, and Draco loved Hermione. Sometimes that is all that is needed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I really love both of these characters - where they start in the books, and where they have been taken by the fandom. My own headcanons and developments of Hermione and Draco are very dear to my heart, and this is effectively a tribute to the way I see them. They aren't two halves of a whole: they are wholes who come together and make a very interesting pair.<br/>I hope you enjoyed this drabble, it was so much fun to write and consider. </p><p>Tomorrow's prompt is "morning", and will be a Lore Olympus Persephone and Hades fic.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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